Oh the campo, watch the geese...

Yo tengo tiempo ahora.
SO i recently returned from the community of el tepayac in the campo(country side) outside of a little division named San Ramon. It was at the top of a mountain in a beautiful cloud forest and magnificent tropical hill side. Where there were banana leaves nearly as big as me and foliage everywhere. It had been raining recently and there was mud up to your ankles everywhere you went. Really it was one of the most beautiful places I have been. Pictures soon to follow.

I was in a family of ten members, mostly young adults and two parents. There was a main house with a living room and sleeping room and a kithen/storage room in the side yard. There were also two other buildings across the road where two yound couples in the family lived. There were a ton of farm animals; chickens, cows, roosters, and of course geese. We arrived by pickup truck in the afternoon, hiked a mile or so and were spread out in a group of six in the community. WEnt to bed early even though my familiy had electricity, and woke up early.
The first morning I woke out i went to wash my face outside, on the way to the house i had to pass one of three geese. This goose, probably 3 feet tall, started squaking and took a bite out of me. Luckily I was wearing thick pants and there was no damage done, but i think i might now have an eternal fear.

Ate the same thing for every meal, beans, rice, tortillas, and a wedge of cheese, with a cup of coffee. Sometimes there was soup, i think twice in the time I was there.

My family had a large coffee farm with thousands of trees. In retrospect the village I was in was not the poorest of the poor. But the village that some other students were in was, they had no electricity and were laborers on other farms.
The women were very passive at my house. Of course I was an extremely odd looking stranger and that had some effect. The only person I had a decent relationship with was the dad. He took me every where in town and toured the farm with me most days. Gender division were very fierce in the campo. Although the fathers daughters worked in the field with him I didn't see the mom leave the kitchen except to serve me.

There was no violence or alcoholism in my house but many other students reported seeing this in theirs. These are both huge problems in the campo and there is trouble eradicating(sp) this in that area.

I didn't do much work or much talking either becase i only got along with the dad. It was a time for much introflection. In tepayac we mostly hung out and partied becuase there was a grand birthday for a 15 year old from my community. We would go around to the other students houses and hang out a lot and not do much work.

There was intense staring from the campesinos towards us, of course most of them had not seen a gringo, and certainly never had them in their houses. But it really never stopped. Smiles ssstares and little talking.
With all the staring going on it was easy to see the hardship and sadness in the eyes of the women in the campo. Although most of them had never lived a different life it could be seen that the women desired something different than what their role provided. This is not true for all women I saw, but for the majority in my family. The father on the other side really appreciated living on his farm, and wouldn't leave it for anything. He was taken from his farm in the 80's to fight for the sandinistas against the contras.

There is much more to say but I will leave at this for now, as I process more and it comes back you all will get a view.

Check it!!!

Howdy all,

I recently returned from the country side where I was living with a family of 10 on their coffee farm. At this moment I do not have time to write about my experience but I will try later today. However a friend here pointed out that the video for the band perrzompopo on youtube is partly shot near my neighborhood in Managua. So I am uploading the link for you all to check out.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OmrZKf0jJ7w

There are some parts on here like, jesus on the ball, which is right down the corner but I don't think that is the official Nica name. Also there are shots of graffiti which are on the walls of the university that i go to here se llama universidad de central america. Check back soon there will be more.
-Paz-

¿Who wants a bite?

HOla todos,
Que tal. todos bien?
Whats good here? Lots of stuff, but not much is happenin´.

Thursday the group is going to the campo which is like ¨the country side¨really we are going to live with the poorest of the poor in latin america for a week. Pretty exciting. They are going to be our mentors, pretty much we will work with them in the fields and cook beans and rice with them in their kitchens and sleep in hammocks in their trees. SO i will tell you all about that when we return.

The past few days we have been taught by Dora Maria Tellez who is the president of Movimiento Renovación Sandinista The newest movement of sandinista actions. She was a commandante in the revolution. She was the #2 commander in the takeover of the national palace in 1978 and also led the brigade that took Leon the next year. Very cool. in 2005 she was appointed visiting professor of Latin American studies at Harvard, but was refused entry because the current government has barred her as a terrorist. Muy loco.

SO i think that bugs and the like have an affinity for me. I have been able to handle the hormigas(ants) and geckos that are usually in my room. But lately I have had cucarachas in my room, which are damn hard to kill. However last night was the worst. I was getting ready for bed and sweeping of the sheet with my hand when a scorpion started scurrying across my bed. chinga chinga chinga... Thus i yelled, my mom came in and she yelled. I swipped it off my bed with my shoe and accidently launched it at my mom. That moment was very funny, but only for me. those of you buddhists shouldn´t read the next part. Then i had to smash it with my shoe. que triste.

sO care for a bite?

Who likes to get hit with a bag of juice?

Today there is no school for us, and for kids who go to secondary and primary school here, they have off til wednesday because this weekend is the celebration of independence for Nica. So I have more than ample time to write before the power goes off.

The victor jara concert i was at a couple nights ago opened up my eyes to the accesability art gives to revolutionary movement. Although I could understand very little of what was being sung by the groups at the concert there was a feeling of unity amongst the crowd singing along with the songs that is not apparent to me at other sing-along concerts. It could however also have been the amount of rum in my system, but i think not. within the youth of nicaragua there is a connected feeling of comprehension of resistence against an ultimate power that I think is taught into the lifestyle of the youth here that has been passed along for many generations. I think it is possible in the youth around the world but that it is lacking action in most of the youth in our country. I would also guess that is similar in most 1st world countries but im not going to make that point here for a lack of knowledge.

SO that was cool. Not too much has been happening here. If you do not know there was recently a hurricane that blasted through the NE coast of Nicaragua, where the poorest part of the country exists. So all around Managua there have been many fundraising efforts, including another concert that I attended last night-and their group is called perrozompopo. They are Nica and are a wierd mix of rock, metal, psychadelic funk, and sappy love music, but it was fun and I would suggest checking them out if you can. Plus it was good for the hurucane victims. perrozompopo also means lizard, i think, and before I found this out i kept thinking the bass player looked like a lizard all night, que extrano.

So i am becomming more nicaraguan day by day, i guess. The other day was my first experience having to wash my clothes by hand in something like a washboard, but it is part of a pisa which is like the multi-use sink in most households here. Although that may not sound like any sort of achievement, and it wasn't really, but it was hard to do and enteraining as hell for my family to watch. it takes mad muscles and i have mad more respect for my host mama now. Plus I don't even think I did it correctly, because there was residual dried soap in my clothes. Also I'm sure I have mentioned there is no running water available past 8am and there are also no water heaters so the shower immediately after waking before 8 is brutally cold. However today was my first bucket shower, its exactly what it sounds like-scoop water out of large barrel, pour on self. And that was amazingly refreshing, check it out if you get a chance, of course it helps to be in a tropical climate.

Me and two friends went to this huge mercado called Huembes, where you can get most anything you want in whatever variety, and of course our group stands out as pretty damn white. Two lanky whities and one other who had just bought a guitar at the mercado. So we are standing out blatantly at this mercado and making our way back through to find a Nica baseball team cap. In Nicaragua there are these things called refrescos, which are not sodas like in some spaninsh speaking countries, but more like juices and shakes and similar beverages, usually served in a plastic bag. On our way through we enter this ally way that goes under a flight of stairs. I am the last to enter and just as I do I get hit in the back of the head with a bag still filled with refresco. Luckily it didn't break and didn't really spill but i immediately turned around and caught like 5 nicas staring at me. It was odd and I couldn't really make a fuss excepting making a few expletive deleteds without getting beat up. So I went on my way and this blog got its title.

Oh the rains comin´ down

Hola amigos y amigas, I am excited that I get to write this now. In the part of Managua that I am residing there is no power available between 5 and 10 pm. that makes it difficult to stay up to date with these entries as class finishes at 5 and immediately the power goes out. One of our classes is held at CIES, a public healthcare school that has generators but closes their computer room at 3 pm, que triste. Anyway I had to trek over here in my first out of doors tropical rianstorm. I guess luckily I was the only one sensible enough, out of my friends, to have a rain jacket.

In my first post I wrote about the beach near San Juan del Sur and I think I should expand on it some more. There were six of us with limited supplies of money, which is silly becuase Nicaragua is super cheap and the exchange rate is 20 cordobas to 1 dollar. However we didn´t want to pay the amount that taxis cost in that town for cheles (gringos) so we went to walk to a beach near San Juan del Sur. No one in the group was interested in scaling the beach wall like I was so we went on a treck in and around the hills of San Juan. We came to a gated property with magnificent gardens and armed guards, which isn´t unusual, just private security. We traveled on; up some hills and through some woods and surfaced midway up this tiny mountain onto a gorgeous view of the pacific ocean with these terraced fingers reaching out and around the water and dotted ginormous rock formations in the distance. Mostly formations of volcanic rock but also igneous rock as well. We made our way up and around and down the hill with the wind blowing in huge gusts at each crest. We made our way down to the beach following this tiny stream for the last part that fed into, well, the ocean ofcourse. The beach was super rocky and you couldn´t really swim there, but there were pretty rocks and pieces of coral to be found. It´s a good thing we didn´t scale the wall like i wanted because it wounld not of worked at all.

We walked up and along the hill some more to find a more swimable beach and accidently walked in a circle above the beach so decided to find another way becuase we had little water and no food and the threat of dehydration was looming. We made the peak of one hill and saw in the near distance a 15 foot gate with another armed guard infront of a tin shack who looked way more menacing than the ones before. We approached him with caution and he began to raise his gun towards us... just kidding that didn´t happen yet, dios mio. But we talked to him and explained where we entered but he didn´t know why the guards on the other side didn´t tell him. He unlocked the gate and let us through. 10 yrds past the gate we look down the hill and there is the city of San Juan del Sur in very close proximity when we thought we could only ten numbers of kilometers away, and ofcourse when we walk down we arrive at the first gate we entered but by a side path.
Anyway that was the beach and turned out to be a long story.

So back to the city; I saw my first chicken on a bus, but it unfortuantely wasn´t like the scene from borat in the subway. There were just to smallish looking chickens calmy lying in a bag, alive of course, wating to be made into some fried chiken, or some other dish. I only say fried chicken because that is what my host-mom, who I will call mom from now on, made me last night. Strange because it seemed so American, but less so than the turkey and mashed potatos I got the night before. Maybe she thinks I don´t like Nica food which is strange becuase I eat everything given to me and tell her how good it is. To all my hommies living in your own cribs this year--God I love getting meals made for me twice a day--umm umm good.

Food is an odd thing here, especially sushi in Latin America. i know most people like cheese, right? but tell who likes it on their sushi? besides latinos of course. YOu can´t get away from it, it is served in almost every roll. There are also these breaded fried cheese squares served on a skewer. 2 in X 1in X 0.5 in was there dimension. Anyway we got this roll that wrapped in a layer of melted gooey cheese layer probably served with some cheese sauce. It was very flavorful but I think it started my decline into a lactose-intolerancy. que triste.

Last night was sweet- If you know of Victor Jara you are cooler than me, if you don´t know about him check him out on line. He was a revolutionary Nica musician who was, alcharse al pico, which means along the lines of assassinate in nica spanish. on 9/11/1979, I think that was the year. So ofcourse last night commemorated his death. And there was a concert with a ton of groups who performed revolutionary type folk music que twany(cool). There were a ton of young folks there boozing and singing and being merry, and let the truth be known there are many pretty nicaraguan women down, and handsome boys for all you lady readers as well, and well some of them flocked to this concert which was, in one word, great. I have to go to class now but stay posted and I will keep you updated. PAz y Luz mis amigos.

My primary days

Hola amigos, muchachos, and loved ones. This is my first entry in this blog from nicaragua. Welcome all to my world here through my words, and hopefully some photos.

Please pardon my gramatic and spelling errors when you encounter them. I have been in Managua Nicaragua for a little over a week and a half.

Where I have seen and tried to hear extreme amounts of cultural happenings that are still not quite making sense to me. A little about my siuation I am living in a middle working-class barrio called Maximo Jerez. There is no running water after 8 am and beginning this week the electricity will be turned off from 5-10pm, because last week it was from 2-7pm. There is of course an energy crisis that is causing this preplanned disturbance, but there is electricity during the entire weekend.

I just returned from the beach of San Juan del Sur on the south west pacific side of nicaragua just north of costa rica. There were a bunch of ships in the harbor when we first got there, so after a quiet breakfast on the beach we went adventuring, and stumbled onto some of the most beautiful scenes I have encountered in my life. Being surrounded by a tropical jungle we were following this teraced-cut patch along a jagged beach made of sediment and volcanic rock, with the mountains of costa rica in the distance. It was like a paradise scene where a bunch of ucky teenage travelers go for a private beach triop and then get tormented by a muderer throughout.

So far here we have traveled to Leon and gone on many political and educational excursions like the national assembly, and a voter registration type talk, and also to the traveling museum of the literacy crusade, and other jaunts to wet our palets with culture and language before our real classes begin this week.

SO far the only consistent thing is spanish class in the morning. But i'm not sure what the structure of it is and we switch instructors every week. Well every other week because we travel outside of managua every other week. Like next week we a going to a campo in central nica for a week and living with a family there. Then returning for another week to managua and such.

Nica is crazy, i have never been to the tropics so the climate is nearly deathly. I have also never seen such a diversity of economic standing street to street nor the level of poverty abundant here. one of the first days we passed an encampment built out of trashbags and rope creating a multi-room structure for people to live in. I thought that it was a slum at first but came to find out that it is part of a yearly protest against the neglection of benefits by the government for workers affected by the spraying of pesticides by dole in the 60's and 70's. SO this trip is wild and exciting so far, but i feel this is enough for the first blog, but please stay tuned, as i will try to update this frequently.